Yikes! Microsoft practically hand delivered access to their data for the NSA

Sigh. We all knew with the original Snowden NSA PRISM leak that Microsoft was part of the group of big tech companies that provided “direct access” for the NSA to their data; but this most recent leak from Snowden to The Guardian explains how Microsoft made obtaining the data a breeze.

Privacy, what privacy?

According to the latest revelation from Snowden, he claims that Microsoft worked closely with the NSA and FBI so that communications via their services, such as Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Skype could be tapped into easily.

The problem appears to have been that Microsoft’s data encryption was too tough for the NSA. Kudos for Microsoft for having great data encryption. But wait, Microsoft then helped the NSA bypass the encryption, so they could get to the data more easily.

According to the top-secret documents, it reveals, “the agency already had pre-encryption stage access” and “the company [Microsoft] worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide.”

The NSA explained that “this new capability will result in a much more complete and timely collection response” and “this success is the result of the FBI working for many months with Microsoft to get this tasking and collection solution established.”

Feel free to read the rest of the article over on The Guardian. But these leaks by Snowden are getting worse and worse. Microsoft can deny all they want about it, but it’s not looking good for them, and given this information, I’m guessing Facebook and other tech companies aren’t too far off the same beaten path as Microsoft.